Scraping the leftovers from your plate into the kitchen bin is a habit being targeted as part of a Community Food Waste Challenge.

The campaign is running as part of Sustainable St Albans Week from November 19-26, alongside various events on environmental sustainability.

The organisers are calling for food waste pioneers to come forward to help build a body of local know-how on how to reduce the amount of food thrown away, and then to share it with local residents to encourage people to take part in A Week Without Food Waste.

Love Food Hate Waste, a national initiative which seeks to reduce the amount of food waste, reports that almost 50 per cent of food thrown away in the UK comes from our homes and that we throw away seven million tonnes of food and drink every year.

The cost of throwing away this amount of waste is around £60 a month for families with children.

Anyone who is already committed to reducing their food waste, and those who want to get better at it, are invited to take part in two events taking place as part of St Albans and Harpenden Food and Drink Festival in October.

Lesley Flowers from Sustainable St Albans said: “We want to find enthusiastic local people who want to increase their skills and knowledge on reducing food waste. We have organised a film screening and a training workshop run by Love Food Hate Waste and hope that the food waste pioneers who sign up for the training will share their learning with others through local groups, or with friends and neighbours.”

The film is called Just Eat It and is showing in Harpenden on October 28 at 7:30pm at Sir John Lawes’ drama theatre. Tickets are £5/£1 concessions and can be booked from the Sustainable St Albans website or from here.

The Love Food Hate Waste training session is on October 1 in central St Albans and you can book for the session by emailing sustweek@transitionstalbans.org. The session will cost £5 or £1 for community groups or concessions.